skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
I may not be representative, but I actually prefer the lack of backlighting in my keyboard-kindle. The fonts don't bother me either, but Gruber may have a point here.

I would like a good touchscreen, however I like my page-turning buttons and do not want to give up those. I'm also concerned that battery life will be worse on these newer version, and that is something I care about.

Gruber has a point in that the Kindle should be extremely optimized for reading. I already own an iPad, I don't want an eBook Reader that tries to be a cheap tablet.
Hmmm, how about...

A smarter and faster version of git-bisect - given an anonymous function, when does the answer returned change working backwards through the codebase?

Or perhaps time warp integration - request a build of project foo but with library bar from the last tagged release version and function baz from a year ago.
Last February I started a small YouTube channel surrounding eSports called DrZealotTV. http://youtube.com/DrZealotTV

Although it hasn't even broken even, I'm now equipped with a ton of expertise and I have a few efforts I'm working on that I think will be quite popular. :)
Pretty related: http://www.forbes.com/sites/quora/2012/10/10/do-females-amon...

"Startups who have female first hires typically are those with less discriminatory hiring practices. So the effect is not female hires => higher profits, but rather female hires => startup doesn’t discriminate => startup seeks most efficient outcome => maximizes profits."
Yes, that's certainly possible. However, I don't think the math worked out in Zynga's favor in this case. And the reason why people joined anyway was because it's emotionally difficult to do that math correctly when your eyes are blinded by dollar signs.
I use a Sony PRS-350 and I'm not hurting too bad in most of these:

Robust: I've had it for almost 2 years, and most of that time didn't even have a cover.

Ability to loan to others: Since I have to strip the DRM anyway to read kindle books, no problem there.

Extended Read Time: Nice to have, but it will charge off of my phone charger (micro USB) so not a big deal.

Random Access: This is the one that hurts. Humans have great spacial access "It's about half way down the page maybe 3/8 of the way through the book" Not a big deal for most novels. I still use dead-tree reference books

Support for Color: Can't remember the last time I read a book with color, other than graphic novels.
They're working on it. http://arewefastyet.com/
I really doubt it.

Hormonal differences have a large impact on what traits are most commonly found in the "average" woman (or man, depending on what you're looking for), at the very least in regards to increased chance of risk-taking. I think this is pretty firmly established in scientific literature by now. However, any specific person may be above or below another of the opposite sex in any particular category, since the variables are so numerous. Making hiring decisions on the basis of sex would be rather stupid. "You should hire females because we'd like to have more females around" is just as sexist as "you should hire more males because we'd like to have more males around." How about looking for people to hire, instead of specific sets of genitalia?

I also think that technically inclined females sometimes have more in common with technically inclined males than they do with "normal" women. A personality amenable to huddling away comfortably in front of a computer screen with a ton of coffee for long periods of time is probably the most crucial factor to success. That's one of the great things about programming though, it's much more talent-based than it is concerned with biological sex, how much money your parents spent on your degree, or whatever else that shouldn't really be relevant but in too many career fields, is still heavily emphasized.
Brilliant. What was your major set back from day 0 till now and how did you overcome it? I am asking you because I need some inspiration here. When I usually hit couple of set backs I tend to demoralize and give up.
I really like building developer tools and kind of miss doing it full time. I built a tool for testing/playing with REST services last year and sell it on the OS X app store:

http://www.uresk.net/httpclient/

I'm not getting rich off it, but it usually brings in a few hundred bucks per month and I like hearing from fellow developers who benefit from using it.
The same thing happens to parents in general, but specifically, first-time parents because they have 0 experience.
Sort of related: I only use Emacs today because of the Emacs starter kit.

Maybe it's particular to Emacs, but I've found that the defaults are often terrible, and half of all tutorials I see for _anything_ are about changing the default case.
More Facebook users are on Android than iOS, but just barely
If I'm going to use Webkit, I'd rather use something simple, like midori. Standard issue on the Raspberry Pi.

Chrome complexity? Browser controlled by commercial entity that sells web ad space? No thanks.
Betting on yourself isn't always the safest. But I'd be curious to know what you meant by betting on yourself. Like investing part of your savings into a side project?
PHP As A Templating Language
Airbnb + legacy Mac & iPhone apps. 50k/yr on average.
I'm about to write a book on precisely this topic. I have been looking hard at addressing this issue over the past 10 years so that I can focus on what's important (Startups!). And I believe that I have finally found the best passive income source, given the limitations that people like ourselves are working with.

I'm still in the process of experimenting with my method to see how far I can take it, but the basics of it work already.

A lot of what people define as "passive income" is questionable. Most, if not all, passive income investment strategies require you to hold down a job, or other income, while financing assets that some day, HOPEFULLY, will be paid off enough that you don't have to work ever again.

Most of those plans take too long for my satisfaction. There are other means and methods if you learn and apply yourself. My book will hopefully detail and compare my method with a majority of others.

The obvious ones to look at, if you can invest time and/or money -

* Share trading
* Property investment
* Property flipping/options
* Google AdSense (or similar)
* Affiliate marketing
* Tim Ferriss' muse / 4HWW
* Network marketing/MLM
* Website flipping

All of them have varying degrees of learning curve and time commitment to make happen. Few people will tell you how much commitment you need to make, they just focus on dangling the carrot.
nflbyeweeks.com - gets over 1,000 uniques each day and generates between $2 and $5 each day with Adsense. Not overly impressive but it's still nice.
Welcome to the new eBay
No matter how hard I try, all my eggs only seem to fit into one basket at a time. I don't recommend it, but it has worked well for me thus far.
Facebook Offers to Sweeten Deal to Settle ‘Sponsored Stories’ Suit
I understand now, and I think I see where you are coming from - but I think we're speaking at cross purposes to each other. You don't want these features that I've described on your kindle, because you don't see your kindle as serving 100% replacement for all books.

I think the point that Gruber, the OP, and I were trying to make (though I could be wrong) - is that we believe the ultimate goal, the end-game for a kindle, is to be in every way as good as a book. Books don't run out of battery, don't shatter when you sit on them, textbooks have color, and can be flipped through.

I think you'll agree - that unless the Kindle has (at least) all of those features, you won't be able to replace 100% of your book usage with one - and you'll need to turn to other sources (either your tablet, or paper, etc...)

Power, for me, is probably the killer feature. I can be careful with the kindle, I rarely read/use textbooks when I'm not taking a course, and I can work around (painfully) the ability to flip through a book - but particularly when we are heading off grid for a while, trying to keep the kindle charged is always a hassle, and I'm always dragging along at least one, if not two hyperjuice batteries in my packout (though, admittedly, one of them also serves to keep my iPhone charged for GPS/Map usage)

Of course, on the flip side, I'm bringing my entire 200+ book library with me....
Firefox is a monster. Too big. I switched to Webkit and midori (but there are certainly other small, simple WebKit-based alternatives).

So no to Gecko.
> I think it works out that you can make $10-15k/year
> for not much work.

Gross or net revenue? I would imagine that the electricity bills would be not insignificant.
Let's not get caught up in the morals of what Pincus said.

It's the moral hazard - you work for a boss who acts like that, and they'll throw you under the bus pretty quickly just as well.

And that boss will hire folks who think like (s)he does also.
I've never not been broken by a .NET update or service pack since .NET 3.0 (.NET 3.0, 3.5, 3.5 sp1, 4.0, 4.5).

This schedule rules out any chance for developers to catch these bugs and report them.
Municipal bonds, loans to your local government are free of taxes (both state and fed). I have excess cash that would normally be in certificate of deposit in muni bonds currently making 3% tax free. There are risks, best to consult with a money manager if you are uncertain on how to gauge the associated risks.
What [major] eBook format keep their content in something other than ASCII (or Unicode or text of some kind)?
It doesn't need quite the same attention as the other stuff, nor does it have the same development pace. It's using CVS for crying out loud.

Also, it's shared with other projects (Google uses it).
12 Potential Ranking Factors for the Upcoming Facebook Search Engine
Let's not get caught up in the morals of what Pincus said.

It's even against your self interest - you work for a boss who acts like that, and they'll throw you under the bus pretty quickly just as well.

And that boss will hire folks who think like (s)he does also.
It's not often that I find myself disgusted with an author, but this post is quite frankly the worst thing I have seen on HN in a long time. The author likens himself to a Buddhist monk, " I liken it to having the self discipline of a Buddhist monk," without any clue to what it means to be a Buddhist Monk. Do you think a monk would say that you should "build a strong personal brand" to "turn you into the Coca-Cola of personal brands." ?

Author, if you are reading this, you are delusional at best. To everyone else, I hope that if truly would like to understand how to actually engage a more Buddhist lifestyle that you attend some lectures at your local monastery, if you're here in the Bay Area check out www.sfzc.org.
Yep, baby products are another good example. Initially, the parents are happy, but soon enough they become stressed out, for the long haul. Both emotions play in the retailers' favor.

There was a controversy a while back about how Target figured out a teenage girl was pregnant before her dad did (based on her purchases) and started sending her ads for baby products. The reason why they did this is because people don't shop around for the best deals on everyday items, not really. People think they're getting the best deal, but they're actually trapped in their habits.

One of the few times when these habits are reshaped is when a baby is born, because newfound parents suddenly start buying a lot of new stuff, but don't have a lot of free time to research the options. By detecting customers who will become parents in the near future and sending them specially targeted advertising/discounts ahead of time for new products that they'll need, you can snag them as customers for years to come.
Meet The Woman Who Turned The Facebook IPO Upside Down (FB)
Ask HN: Which mobile ad network do you recommend?
Which mobile ad network do you recommend for iOS, and which format (banner / full-screen / something else)?
>See, it's statements like that which annoy women. What do "pleasing aesthetics" have to do with anything? Why do you even need to refer to that when you talk about women?

Because he cares about it. What's YOUR problem?
Just with a single page? That's impressive!
In regards to the 401k, I disagree. Unless your employer only offers really crappy funds it's in no way gambling.

First off, your employer match is essentially free money. It's foolish to ignore that. The tax benefits can also be significant. For instance, I contribute 25% of my pre-tax salary to my 401k. That works out to $1500 a month but because my taxable income is lowered my monthly net is only decreased by about $950. That's $550 a month into savings that I wouldn't have previously had due to taxes.

If you follow the investing philosophy of John C. Bogle, founder of Vanguard, you'll likely do just fine. Assuming you're young, you just split your 401k between four index funds: total bond market, total domestic stock market, total international stock market and real estate investment trusts (REITs). I do 20/45/25/10. Yes, in the short term you might take a big hit but in the long term (>20 years) this is historically shown to perform very well. As you get closer to retirement you increase the proportion of your portfolio in bonds so as to lower your risk.
Brilliant Commentary on the Current Patent System (in comic form)
I've been using oh-my-zsh and the startup is really slow. I hear prezto solves this. How do i upgrade from oh-my to prezto? No one seems to answer that ?
Who cares about unsophisticated investors who buy at the IPO or employees, or long-term stability? This company was a short term deal like many others in the web startup space. Hype worked. Virtual goods? It makes me laugh everytine I say it. Pincus and other investors made heaps of cash from this, no doubt. Mission accomplished. Call it sa success. Time to close up shop and on to the next one.

Facebook is much the same way. Some people have made fortunes. Who cares about public investors, Wall Street and employees? They'll survive.

It's just business.
I use TeeSpring (http://www.teespring.com) to create t-shirts and market them towards people on my Facebook page (http://www.facebook.com/ModernSherlock).

Generally does very well. Way better than other stuff I've tried, like SEO/Marketing etc. The only problems I have is using a crap design, so it pays to know what the audience really wants before I try selling it to them.
I see that - but it would be nice if they covered which groups exactly would be funded by each item. For example, I am all for the hardware support aspect of Ubuntu - I would personally want to fund superior multi-display support and suspend/resume.

Who are the developers in Ubuntu working on it ? In fact, ARE THERE any developers working on it. I would really appreciate some increased transparency here - because as I see it, there are lots of contenders for my money: including LinuxMint, which IMHO needs money more desperately.
> you could argue that at $25 it's still cheaper than a wedding planner

That's exactly my point, when your competition isn't even anywhere in the neighborhood, you might as well raise your prices. A bride-to-be isn't going to see a $25 wedding DJ app as being expensive; she's going to see it as being 1/10th of what an actual wedding DJ would cause. You said people are only willing to pay for wedding-related services - well, this is replacing a wedding-related service, and you have to consider the competition when determining pricing.

And I don't think it's only wedding-related services that cost a lot. There are plenty of purchases associated with weddings (clothing, food, etc.) that are way overpriced.

> Not every bride is foolish enough to think that everything will be perfect.

They don't all have to be that foolish, there just has to be a big enough group of them that you have a solid customer base. In this situation, I think that's definitely the case.
Net, I think. The LED bulbs aren't so inefficient. But there is an up front cost of about $250 per Aerogrow. It's the tallest/biggest unit you need.
A kind thing for her :P Her sessions were excellent.
State and municipality bonds are sort of like U.S. Treasury bonds, except they're issued by a state or local government. They pay a fixed interest rate, but your interest is usually tax-free.

Of course, they pay a lower interest rate than taxable bonds. Thus, the only reason these tax-free bonds would be better than taxable bonds is if you are in a high enough marginal tax bracket to compensate for the difference in interest between these tax-free bonds and taxable bonds.

An example should make this all clear. Assume you have a marginal tax rate of 40%. (You earn a lot of money.) If you invest $100,000 in a typical taxable bond that pays 10%, each year you will get $10,000. But subtract out the 40% tax, and you are left with only $6,000 after-tax.

Compare this with what would happen if you invested that same $100,000 in a tax-free state bond. This bond only pays 8%, being tax-free and all. Each year you get $8,000. But you pay no tax, so you are in fact better off than if you had bought the taxable bonds!

Now, lets change your marginal tax bracket to 10%--you don't earn much money, so your marginal rate is low. You invest that same $100,000 in the taxable bond that pays 10%, you will get $10,000 pre-tax but only pay your marginal rate, 10%, on that sum, so you are left with $9,000.

With the tax-free state bond at 8%, you only get $8,000, though you don't pay any tax on it. So at your low marginal rate, you would have been better off buying the taxable bond.

My point is, tax-free bonds are probably only useful if you earn a lot of income each year to put you in a high marginal rate.

Source: I'm a law student and we learned about tax-exempt state/municipal bonds today in Tax!
Facebook Reverse-Engineers A Soul With Its New Ad
This must have come out of the ITA Software acquisition.... (Heading "Attention required" 'You must follow the ITA convention of using...')
They were a big common lisp user apparently.

Google is normally very specific on the languages allowed for internal projects. A product/company acquisition with large assets written in common lisp would necessitate this becoming the "Google Common lisp style guide" rather than what it was most likely originally the "ITA Software" common lisp style guide. Speculation of course, but looks likely.
well, the topic is about getting your startup covered, not whether or not your startup is building something worthy.

i guess it comes down to this: quality of worth as it pertains to impact in the real world does not directly correlate with quality of worth as it pertains to the value it has as a news story.

i maintain, however, that if your goal is coverage, then by definition "worth" is only relevant to the ability for it to be covered at all.
delivering awesome, awesome support would require lots and lots of time/effort != passive
While I applaud your financial ethic, in this day and age of our "rentership society" it's not exactly easy for everyone to do all that.

All it takes, for example, is a medical tragedy to befall you or your close family - medical costs are one of the biggest reasons for bankruptcy as now insurance companies play fast and loose with who, what and how much they cover.
Google Images Dominated By Pictures Of Romney For “Completely Wrong” Search
You cannot depreciate a write down. If you have an impaired asset, like OMGPOP, you have to write it down to whatever the new value is. Depreciation doesn't enter into the picture.
How are 3rd party hosting options part of a cost comparison?

Hosting any DB offsite comes at a cost, and it does not appear that any one database platform has an advantage over another in terms of a service provider.
Are monks a good example of very disciplined people? Yup. Is DROdio? Yup. Seems like a good analogy to me.

It seems like recently there's been a trend in HN comments where people miss the forest for the trees, picking out one little piece of a post to whine about instead of learning from the whole thing.
NetZero subscribers can share free data with Facebook friends
How are you monetizing Halloweenbingocards.net ??
"You know, any contractor willing to work on that Death Star knew the risks. If they were killed, it was their own fault. A roofer listens to this... [taps his heart] not his wallet."

http://www.whysanity.net/monos/clerks5.html
The problem with the Girl Named Florida is that the ambiguous wording is more confusing than the math.

Ambiguous: "In a family with two children, what are the chances, if one of the children is a girl named Florida, that both children are girls?"

More clear, and emphasizing the importance of precise wording when discussing probability: "Among families with two children, with at least one of the children being a girl named Florida, what portion have two girls? (Assume that all names are chosen randomly from the same distribution, independently of all other factors; and sex is determined as by a fair coin toss.)"
Assuming the investment was bought on the open market, Zynga probably didn't see a penny of it (though it might have helped to raise or stabilize the stock price in a miniscule way).

So Pincus doesn't have any reason to even read your email, much less respond.
I think you win the prize for the most creative idea in this thread.
Did you do any market testing to see if there was a need, or was this scratching your own itch?
Intuitively, I'd agree. When we release the upcoming major version (iPad support, advanced queueing, etc) I'd like to try $10.

On the other hand, after 1.5 years at $5 we've been trying $2, and revenue has been consistently higher since the change. I suspect this is because it drove us into findable range in the "Top Paid Music" chart, but with no analytics it's frustratingly hard to prove.
Facebook tests ‘Want,’ ‘Collect’ buttons and muscles in on Pinterest’s turf
> Does this suggest noncommercial library books will offer research capabilities that commercial ebooks will not?

If they are scanned noncommercial library books, I guess.

I'm not sure how this is really relevant though. Scanning for this use may be fair use (hooray! some sanity), but the publishers aren't providing an ASCII file to the libraries either, the libraries are making a copy...hence the need for a fair use decision.
Android phones are not a commodity. That a lot of the Android phone models are cheap, goes to show that there is a really big market for phones that sell for a few bucks on a 2-year old contract.

However take for instance the Galaxy S phones. Galaxy S III sells for €569 without a contract in my country, and with a subsidised price of €219 for a €37/month contract.

That's not cheap, and it isn't a commodity. Down here Galaxy S devices have always been at about the same price as iPhone models. And people still buy them like crazy, even if the average monthly salary is less than €1000 per month.

The market is big and only growing. There is enough room for everybody, low-end or high-end.

It's a little ironic you say that though, because that is how Nokia grew, by commoditizing phones. They basically created the feature-phone market.
Should be a format that can be grep'd, made into PostScript, DejaVu, etc. Versatile. ASCII works well for that. Open, non-proprietary format.

Not only that, working with raw text is so much faster than anything else. less(1) is the most responsive "ebook reader" I've ever used. It never chokes on huge files. less -n

Ever try reading 100 or more PDF's in one sitting?

But with 100 ASCII docs, it's possible to skim them fast using less, or mine some text with some UNIX utility.

I like what this judge said. Digitizing books not just about putting the book on a "paper-like" screen with beautiful fonts, it's about enabling new utility. Working with the text.
Another excellent collection of advice from Patrick, this time with multiple email scripts to work off of.

All the recent great posts on lifecycle email has me wishing I actually had a SAAS website I could send out email for!
What Comes After the Touch Screen?